Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Two Black Women, Education Policy and the Shame of a Nation

Two black women, Tanya McDowell, sentenced to 12 years in prison for providing a fake address to get her child into a better school system in Connecticut; and Pacale Mauclair, attacked and humiliated by the New York Post as "the worst teacher in NY" on the basis of bogus Teacher Data Reports even though she was a great teacher at a great school, symbolize the insanity of current education policies promoted by both major parties. Hypersegregation,universal testing, privatization and demonization of teachers is what they offer in the face of growing racial and economic inequality. And their desperation to achieve results with ill considered, unproven policies leads to cruelty and scapegoating. The stories of Tanya McDowell and Pascale Mauclair are the Shame of a Nation, a shame in which many people are complicit. If there is a worse time in the history of US Education in the last 50 years, I have trouble figuring out when that was